The 12 Dogs of Christmas (7 page)

“Merry Christmas, dog lovers, merry Christmas!” Norman shouted out as he dismounted from his high seat with a piece of paper, a nail, and a hammer in his hand. He marched over to the side of the barn and nailed the paper to it. It was a notice that read: BY ORDER OF THE MAYOR, ALL DOGS MUST BE REMOVED ON OR BEFORE MIDNIGHT DECEMBER 24. “A little extra time, Mrs. Stevens, in the spirit of the season.” He chuckled an unpleasant chuckle. “But I can assure you if those dogs are still here on Christmas Day, they are mine!” Then he spotted Emma. “There you are.” He walked over to Emma and grabbed her by one of her braids. “Come on, you're late for work.” He dragged Emma toward the Fearsome Machine. Mrs. Stevens rushed to stop him, but Mike stopped her and reminded her that Emma working for Norman was their only hope of getting Yeti back.

Norman gave Emma the task of cleaning out all the cages. Emma wanted to feed the dogs, but Norman said they had already been fed. If they had, it hadn't been much, and many of the dogs whimpered with hunger. “Keep them quiet,” Norman ordered. “That's part of your job, too, to keep them mangy mutts quiet.”

Emma kept hoping Norman would leave or go in his office, but he stayed close and kept an eye on her. The advantage was that she could also keep an eye on Norman, and she soon learned where he kept a large ring of keys, the keys to the various dog cage padlocks. Norman had used one of the keys to open a cage and take out a Border Collie, which he then dragged away. Emma put down her cleaning tools and quietly followed him, seeing where he hooked the key ring on a nail in the office before going out again to help bug-face Melvin put the Collie into another cage by the front. Emma went into the office to get the keys, keeping an eye through the door on the two men. Suddenly old Scratch jumped on top of the old metal filing cabinet Emma was standing by, meowing an alarm. Quickly, Emma opened the top drawer and pushed old Scratch in, then closed it. Then she grabbed the keys and ran out of the office.

She made her way to the puppy's cage and opened it, took him out, and held him tight. Then she turned to Yeti's cage, but the cage door was already opened, and Yeti was gone. The surrounding dogs were getting excited and starting to bark. “Hey,” she heard Norman yell from a distance, “I told you to keep them dogs from yapping! Shut them up!” But Emma had moved to the back of the old factory and found another room to hide in.

Norman, growing suspicious, started to look for her. “Bad things happen to bad little girls—you hear me?! Where are you?” Then he came upon the puppy's empty cage. “Ho, ho, you have gone and done it now.” He called bug-face Melvin over, and Emma could see from a crack in the door that they were plotting something horrible. She decided to move farther back into the room, and there she discovered something strange. On a roll of hooks dangled dog collars, a lot of dog collars! Why were they here? Why weren't they on the dogs? And where were the dogs they belonged to? Emma got a sinking feeling. What had bug-face Melvin and Norman been doing with the dogs? And then she saw that one collar had a name marked on it in ink: YETI. Right then and there Emma knew that she could not just rescue the puppy; she had to rescue all the dogs!

Emma looked back into the main part of the dog pound and didn't see Norman anywhere. She went in and started opening up all the cages with Norman's keys, releasing Labs and Collies, Retrievers and German Shepherds, then she herded them to a big side door.

As soon as she opened the door, she was hit in the face with a bright light. It was the headlamps of a truck. She squinted to see bug-face Melvin scurrying to gather the newly freed dogs. Then a hand, a greasy-gloved hand, came down on her shoulder from behind her, and she heard the faint cackling of Norman Doyle's voice and smelled the less-than-faint scent of his breath.

13
Dolores to the Rescue

The next day was Saturday, but all the kids had agreed to come to school in the morning for another rehearsal of the Christmas program. Afterward they would go out to collect table scraps for the dogs. When Mrs. Stevens and Mike got up that morning, they found that Emma was not in her bed. They thought that maybe Norman had made her work late again and she had decided to stay in town with Dolores. They figured they would see her at the rehearsal.

As Mike and his mother were driving into town, they saw several dogs running in the street. They looked at one another. “Emma!” they shouted. “She must have let them out of the dog pound.” Mrs. Stevens explained what they both were thinking. They stopped the truck and scrambled to round up the dogs, managing to get seven of them into the truck. But Yeti was not among them. And where were Emma and the puppy?

When Mrs. Stevens and Mike came into the assembly hall, Coach and the kids were in the middle of rehearsing the moves the coach had worked out on the blackboard. Girls with flutes were playing pipers, and boys with gold foil cardboard rings were holding them up high; other boys were leaping like lords, while a few girls were making the motions of milking cows. The coach had not yet figured out how he would indicate geese laying eggs. None of this was poetry in motion, and on top of that, their partridge in a pear tree, Emma, was not there.

“Sorry we're late,” Mrs. Stevens said as Mike ran to the stage and she positioned herself on the piano bench. “But something came up that was really worth being late for.”

“Where's Emma?” Coach Cullimore asked.

“She didn't come to school?”

The coach shook his head no and exchanged a worried glance with Mrs. Stevens. But they knew how independent Emma was. Besides, they had a rehearsal to finish, and over fifty dogs to feed.

Had they known where Emma was, though, they would have dropped everything and rushed to her rescue. Emma was crouched in a cold corner of the old buggy-whip factory, locked into a large cage with only her puppy to keep her warm.

After the rehearsal Coach Cullimore drove half the kids to one end of the town, and Mrs. Stevens drove the other half to the other end so the kids could start knocking on doors collecting scraps for the dogs. The excitement over their mission was quickly extinguished, as the kids experienced one door slam after another. The residents of the town dismissed them as pesky beggars.

Then Miranda, who, as you know, was the smartest kid in the school, got an idea. “Look,” she said to the other kids in a huddle, “we've been rehearsing Christmas carols for days. Why not give them something for what we're asking? Grown-ups love that stuff!”

The next time they knocked on a door, the man answering it, roast beef sandwich in hand, was greeted by a choir of kids singing “Gloria” as backup to Mike's sterling performance as “Tiny Tim” complete with crutch. “Kind sir,” Mike began, “it's Christmas. Our dogs are very hungry. They're good little fellows, they are. In the kindness of your heart, could you spare a little something left over from your lovely dinner?” The man thought for a moment. About what we can have no idea. But whatever his thoughts were, they turned to kindness, and he placed his sandwich in the bucket Mike offered up. This same gesture was repeated over and over throughout the rest of the day, including at the butcher's, which made John the butcher feel better than he had felt in many days.

When the kids got to the Stevens farm that afternoon, they had plenty of food for the dogs. Mrs. Stevens was thrilled. But they still had not heard from Emma, and Mrs. Stevens was worried. She called Dolores to see if Emma had spent the night there, but Dolores said no, she had not seen her. But she also told Mrs. Stevens not to worry, for she had a pretty good idea where Emma might be.

Angry and determined, Dolores grabbed her hat and coat and drove her old Model T Ford to the abandoned buggy-whip factory and confronted Norman, her “boyfriend.”

“I don't know what you're so sore about, Dolores.” Norman ran after her as Dolores made her way through the building, looking for Emma. “I was just trying to teach her a lesson.”

“Where is she, Norman?!”

“Around the corner.”

And around the corner Dolores found Emma. “A cage?!” She ran up to Emma. “Did they hurt you?”

Dolores ordered Norman to open the cage, which he reluctantly did. “Come on, honey, I told you it was a stupid idea to give a girl a job like this. She let all the dogs out!”

“I'm not listening to you, Norman,” Dolores said as she walked Emma and the puppy out of the factory.

Norman grabbed Emma away from Dolores just as they were leaving. “All right, now, that is enough! I know what's going on here. Oh, yeah, you want a favor, then it's all sweet talk and perfume and
oo-la-la
, and all the time this ragamuffin kid's more important to you than I am. Well, the kid is fired, and the dumb mutt stays here.”

Dolores had never really hit a man before. She did not consider it ladylike. But she smacked Norman good on his arm, and in shock and pain Norman let go of Emma.

“We are through, Dolores!” Norman yelled after her as she took Emma and the puppy to her car.

“Fine!” Dolores yelled back.

“I mean it!” Norman emphasized.

“Wonderful!” Dolores was happy to agree.

“Thanks for getting me out, Aunt Dolores,” Emma said at the car.

“Do
not
call me that! I could crack your daddy's skull for—”

“It's not his fault that I'm so much trouble.”

“Trouble? You are ruining my life,” Dolores corrected. But did she mean it? She suddenly looked at Emma, reached into her pocket, and pulled out an envelope. “Your daddy's letter finally got here. Why didn't you tell me what happened to your mother?” Emma had no answer, for she did not like to talk about her mother's death. “Look, I don't know what your daddy told you about me—about us—but, well, a long time ago I knew your daddy real well, and all I can say is you just better not go depending on what he says because even when he makes a promise it's not something you can trust.” Dolores could see that this was hurting Emma, but Emma, she figured, needed to know, so she wouldn't be hurt anymore. “I'm just saying he is not likely to be here by Christmas—or ever, for that matter. Now, get in!”

They drove in silence except when Dolores offered to let Emma stay with her again. She was hoping Emma would say yes, but Emma wanted to keep the puppy, and she couldn't do that at Dolores's because, despite what Norman had said, they both knew he would be coming around.

Dolores drove Emma to the Stevens farm. When Emma started to get out of the car, Dolores handed her a bundle. “I brought you a few things.”

They were clothes—girl's clothes—and a nice girl's coat and a pair of girl's shoes. Where did they come from? Had there been another young girl in Dolores's past? Or had she actually spent her own money and bought them? Or taken her own time and made the dresses? She wasn't saying; she was just smiling at this daughter of a man who had once been important to her. “If you ever wanted to come by,” Dolores offered as Emma held the clothes tightly with wide eyes, “I would love to do something about that hair. Okay?”

“Okay,” Emma said, thinking how nice that might be. “And thank you for . . . for everything.”

14
Emma to the Rescue

Max, sitting in his doghouse, watched the girl in the cap
walk into the barn carrying a big bundle, which did not
interest Max, and her puppy, which did. Maybe the puppy
would come over to him and he could sniff the puppy, see
where the puppy had been. That would be nice. Unfortunately,
the boy came running in, and the girl put the puppy down
by him. Seeing that the boy was upset, the puppy went in the
opposite direction. The boy, near tears, asked about Yeti.
Max remembered Yeti. She was the good-looking Sheepdog
who had smelled really nice. Max hadn't seen her for a while
and had wondered where she had gone. The girl took something
out of her pocket and showed it to the boy. Max recognized
it; it was Yeti's collar. A tear rolled down the boy's
cheek. “But where is she now?” he asked. “You said she was
there; why didn't you let her out?” The girl tried to explain,
but the boy was too upset to listen. “You lied to me!” “I didn't
lie.” “Yes, you did! Did they kill her?” The girl in the cap
seemed to have no answer. “No—no, you let them kill her!
You lied to me, Emma! You never tell the truth! You lied.
You said you're from New York, and you're not. And you
said you have a mother, and you don't! And I bet your
father's not coming for you either! You're probably just a
runaway girl and don't even have a father!” The boy then
ran out of the barn, crying loudly. Max looked at the girl
and recognized the sadness in her eyes because he had felt so
sad himself.

Something had to be done. That Emma knew. Maybe it was a war after all, and Emma, the adventure hero, had to take action. Mike had depended on her, and she had failed him. She would not fail him again. She decided to take a bold action, and late that night after Mrs. Stevens and Mike had gone to bed, she quietly left the house. She needed to get to the old buggy-whip factory quickly, so she decided to borrow Mrs. Stevens's flatbed truck.

Emma's father, who for a short time had gotten a truck-driving job, had taught her to drive, so she knew exactly what to do, even if she had to stretch her legs a lot to reach the pedals. Still, it would beat walking through the woods on the cold winter's night.

The old buggy-whip factory was at the edge of the woods, and as Emma got closer she noticed some strange lights off among the trees. Some, she could tell, were headlamps from cars and trucks; some flickered as if there were a campfire. Maybe that was it—maybe it was a Boy Scout camp or something. But why would Boy Scouts go camping in winter? Normally, as an adventure hero, this was just the kind of mystery she would investigate, but she had no time to do so now.